WIP: Tool for sorting the entries in scenery_packs.ini

[blumenmann]

I am working on a small tool which sorts the entries inside the scenery_packs.ini file. I made the tool, because it should show an easy solution for the not so optimal situation like the sceneries are handled. At the moment it is more beta than something else, but I think the results are not so bad.

 

Later that script could be used to start xplane, because the ini update should made before the xp start. For this that script would execute the x-plane.exe (or other file depending on your os). Because of that I gave it the name xpstart.

 

But what is the idea?

 

I defined layers for the sceneries. Every scenery is part of a specific layer and the layer defines where inside the scenery_packs.ini should be ordered. The script analyses the files inside a scenery and decides which layer should be used by default. Inside a scenery the scenery creator can overwrite the default rules inside a textfile called scenery.txt

 

Some more information the download is availiable at: http://lyckade.github.io/xpstart/

To use that script python has to be installed. Also the first run can take some minutes, depending how much sceneries you have installed, but all the indexes are cached so the next time it will just take some seconds.

 

What do you think? Should I work more on that or is it just useless? Would love to get some feedback before I invest more time into it.

 

Greetings 

Andreas

 

 

[jfail]

I for one would be happy to see you continue with development of the tool.  I think it would be very handy for those of us who are constantly fooling around with scenery etc..

Edited February 24, 2014 by jfail

[Ben Russell]

Here's what people want:

 

Something that automatically determines which layers each scenery pack needs to go in by looking at the contents of the scenery pack.

 

Most people do not want a tool to help them manage this system manually. They want fully automated.

 

 

 

Been down this road before.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Ben Russell

[Ben Russell]

https://bitbucket.org/xplugins/scenery-manager/wiki/Home

 

[FloB]

My understanding is that the tool is actually doing this fully automatically: "The script analyses the files inside a scenery and decides which layer should be used by default." Am I wrong?

[Ben Russell]

My bad. Lost in the fuzz.

 

Sell your stuff with bullet points. Don't make people hunt for why they should care.

[blumenmann]

My bad. Lost in the fuzz.

Sell your stuff with bullet points. Don't make people hunt for why they should care.

Sorry. It is real complicated for me to write all important points. A good documentation is missing definatly. But let me try to describe the processes in short bullets.

Process for the simple user:

1) instead of clicking on the x-plane.exe, a click on xpsatrt.py is done.

2) script runs looks for new installed sceneries orders them and updates the ini file.

3) script starts xplane.

Ready

Process to a scenery developer:

1) Creating the scenery

2) before publishing next to the library.txt the scenery.txt is added with the information about the optimal layer

Ready

Nothing else has to be done. I think this feature should be inside xplane. It is not complicated, but it solves the problem with the ini file.

At the moment xpstart also has some rules where it can detect a default layer for every scenery without scenery.txt definition.

I just want to give a solution where I see a important but missing feature in xplane.

[blumenmann]

I forgot to mention that step 3 of the user process is not implemented yet.

[FloB]

I think this tool will only be of use if it works reliable (>99%), i.e. I don't have to check if it did right or wrong - and manually correct the ini. file. Otherwise I can do it myself right from the start without having a 25th plugin/work-around-tool installed.

 

BTW: I guess Laminar will change the way scenery is handled rather soon. It should not be complicated to come up with something better, (=more user friendly) than what we have now - and I think Ben outlined ideas for th future when he first introduced the ini.file. You might want to check his blog.

 

Cheers

Flo

[blumenmann]

BTW: I guess Laminar will change the way scenery is handled rather soon. It should not be complicated to come up with something better, (=more user friendly) than what we have now - and I think Ben outlined ideas for th future when he first introduced the ini.file. You might want to check his blog.

I did and he just mentioned a gui. And that would be wrong. Because not the user should do that. There has to be a solution for the scenery creator. For this something like layers could be a good way.

[blumenmann]

Hi everybody,

last months I worked a little bit with that tool and a simple gui and it is working now. Some extra nice feature is a small report, when there is more than one scenery to a ICAO. The report opens inside the browser as a html page and it is really usefull, when you have a lot of sceneries installed.

 

Download at:

http://lyckade.github.io/xpstart/

 

Soon I will upload some screencasts at youtube as documentation.

Have fun and happy landings

Andreas

[PhM]

I have developped the simplest of the plugins that deletes scenery_packs.ini on startup and lets X-Plane re-create it. Install it, forget about it, made many happy people.

 

PhM

[glasscockpits]

Hi everybody,

last months I worked a little bit with that tool and a simple gui and it is working now. Some extra nice feature is a small report, when there is more than one scenery to a ICAO. The report opens inside the browser as a html page and it is really usefull, when you have a lot of sceneries installed.

 

Download at:

http://lyckade.github.io/xpstart/

 

Soon I will upload some screencasts at youtube as documentation.

Have fun and happy landings

Andreas

This looks really promising Andreas. I'm anxious to see your screencasts. Keep up the good work.

[blumenmann]

Here is the short screencast:

[blumenmann]

I have developped the simplest of the plugins that deletes scenery_packs.ini on startup and lets X-Plane re-create it. Install it, forget about it, made many happy people.

 

PhM

 

Your plugin goes one step back and don't solve conflicts with the default sceneries. The behaviour would be as it was in XP9. When there will be more and more default airports all custom sceneries should start with a letter before "G" that they load after Global Airports ;-)

[PhM]

Your plugin goes one step back and don't solve conflicts with the default sceneries. The behaviour would be as it was in XP9. When there will be more and more default airports all custom sceneries should start with a letter before "G" that they load after Global Airports ;-)

I never pretended it was solving everything the way everybody wanted. Just saying that a lot of people were lost, confused, annoyed, etc... with this scenery_pack.ini file and that having it deleted on startup was all they needed.

 

PhM

[blumenmann]

I never pretended it was solving everything the way everybody wanted. Just saying that a lot of people were lost, confused, annoyed, etc... with this scenery_pack.ini file

 

Yes this is exactly what I think. But I also think that the ini file in combination with the default airports need another solution. Laminar have choosen the easy and fast way to include default sceneries, but no solution the way sceneries are grouped than. At this point it is not the part of the user to manually sort the ini file. 

To start a discussion and to give a possible solution I made xpstart. I future xpstart should generate exclusion sceneries automaticly, but that will take a little bit more time. In summer I don't have so much time to program. 

[deetee]

Nice job Andreas I will gladly try out your utility.

[deetee]

Nice job Andreas I will gladly try out your utility.

Unfortunately some of the entries aren't showing at all in the program such as the OsM stuff.

It would also be a little easier if the categories were renamed to "airports", "osm data" "photosceneries" etc to make it easier to sort.

 

So very promising but not usable for me as it is.

[blumenmann]

Unfortunately some of the entries aren't showing at all in the program such as the OsM stuff.

It would also be a little easier if the categories were renamed to "airports", "osm data" "photosceneries" etc to make it easier to sort.

 

So very promising but not usable for me as it is.

Thank you very much for your feedback. 

I was never thinking too much about the layer names, but your idea is really good. When I defined the different layers I were thinking not to the user direction.

The bug with the missing sceneries is in the queue. I think I there will be another section with new or unsorted sceneries. That makes it easier to handle the new sceneries.

Thanks for testing.

[blumenmann]

Unfortunately some of the entries aren't showing at all in the program such as the OsM stuff.

It would also be a little easier if the categories were renamed to "airports", "osm data" "photosceneries" etc to make it easier to sort.

 

So very promising but not usable for me as it is.

Updated the script. Now new names for the layers. Also added a Layer "new add-ons" where all the sceneries with no default layer apears. So really all sceneries will show up. Maybe that will make it easer to deal with new installed sceneries, when the program can not find a default scenery.